Transcript Tools of the Trade – Community Engagement 1

Community Engagement; Maintaining
Involvement and Group Cohesion
Tools of the Trade
Summer, 2009
Tools of the Trade – Community Engagement 1
You’ve identified a key set of partners to form the group to
help with decision making and policy setting in the
coming months. The group has members from different
parts of the County, from multiple disciplines, vocations,
and organizational cultures. All seem eager to be part of
the group, and to appreciate the seriousness of the
H1N1 challenge.
But you realize how difficult it can be to engage and
maintain the involvement of the members of such a
disparate group, and to foster a sense of group cohesion
over many weeks and months—and it just won’t be
feasible to have regular face-to-face meetings with the
whole group.
Tools of the Trade – Community Engagement 2
You decide to meet with your immediate staff—
including some of your more “tech-savvy”
colleagues—to discuss what tools and
technologies might help promote member
involvement and foster group cohesion among
the newly-formed H1N1 communities leaders
group.
What kind of group is this?
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Advisory Committee?
Commission?
Consortium/Alliance?
Network?
Task Force?
By what means might you
currently manage/interact with
such a big, diverse group?
Common means
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Good, old fashioned in-person meetings
Conference calls
E-mail
Listserves
Project web site
Newer tools (e.g., Web conferencing /
virtual meetings; Blogs, Facebook,
MySpace, Twitter, et al.)
When should you use which means?
Reason(s) for Group Engagement
• To keep the group briefed
• To get input from group members
• To maintain group cohesion, especially with a
large and/or disparate group
• To maintain involvement through a project
lifecycle
• To facilitate interaction among persons with
different points of view
• To motivate and foster interest among a group of
people who can help further your mission
• To foster ‘buy-in’ of the final product
Consider using info technology tools…
1. When the group is too large or too dispersed
geographically for regular in-person meetings
2. When information distribution is the primary
goal
3. When interaction can or must be done
asynchronously (b/o scheduling, time zones)
4. When frequent “small bites” of
information/interaction are necessary
5. When feedback requires careful thought rather
than immediate discussion (e.g., doc review)
Consider using info technology tools…
1. When the group is too large or too dispersed
geographically for regular in-person meetings
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Teleconferencing – universal, easy, cheap, but
challenging to keep group members’ attention
Web conferencing / virtual meetings – becoming
more common, great for remote presentations
E-mail, Listserves – universal, easy, but not
great for fostering group cohesion
Web site: allows persistent project collections
Blogs, Facebook/MySpace, Twitter, et al. – great
new tools for fostering on-line “communities”
Consider using info technology tools…
2. When information distribution is the primary
goal
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E-mail, Listserves
Teleconference
Web conferencing / virtual meetings
Blogs, Twitter
Facebook, MySpace
Consider using info technology tools…
3. When interaction can or must be done
asynchronously (b/o scheduling, time zones)
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E-mail, Listserves
Web site
Blogs, Facebook/MySpace, Twitter, et al.
Consider using info technology tools…
4. When frequent “small bites” of
information/interaction are necessary
•
•
•
E-mail, Listserves
Blogs, Twitter
Facebook, MySpace
Consider using info technology tools…
5. When feedback requires careful thought rather
than immediate discussion (e.g., doc review)
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E-mail, Listserves
Web site
Use When:
E-mail,
Teleconference,
Listserves Web Conference
Group is large or
dispersed
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Info distribution is
the primary need
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Asynchronous
interaction required
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“Small bites” of
info, interaction
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Feedback requires
careful thought
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Web
Site
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Blogs, Facebook,
Twitter MySpace
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Newer tools for group engagement
• Social media tools
• Virtual Meeting exercise
New York Times
August 10, 2009
New Tools for Group Engagement
• Blogs, Twitter (Thursday)
• Facebook, MySpace
• Social bookmarking, et al.
Blogs (“web logs”)
• Blogs are websites with regular updates and
typically combine text, images (graphics or
video), and links to other web pages.
• Blogs are usually informal—taking on the tone of
a diary or journal entry.
• Most blogs encourage dialogue by allowing their
readers to leave comments...
(from blog.aids.gov)
Example blog: blog.aids.gov
Facebook
• The goal here is just to give you a sense of two
typical uses of FaceBook
• Personal
• “Corporate”
• Not enough time to teach how to use Facebook;
it is both easy to use but also remarkably rich
• Let’s play: http:/www.facebook.com
More about these “Social Media” tools
• http://Mashable.com
• http://blog.aids.gov/new-media-toolkit.html
• http://www.newmedia.hhs.gov/socialmedia101.html
Social Bookmarking
• Store, organize, search, manage bookmarks
• Save links to web pages
• Organize bookmarks with “tags”
• http://sharethis.com/
• Links to social bookmarking sites
• http://www.diigo.com/
• http://delicious.com/
http://www.diigo.com
Web conferencing /
Virtual meeting software
(iLinc demo)
Bottom line
• Many information and communication
technology tools to help manage and foster
collaboration among a large group of people.
• For any given group, the tool you select should
be determined by the nature of the group, and
the primary purposes of your engaging with it
• Web conferencing can be a powerful tool for
fostering group cohesion – more engaging than
a teleconference, more convenient (and often
more practical) than in-person meetings.
Case Study (cont’d) – How to Run a Meeting
Now that you feel that you have a pretty good handle
on who the key stakeholders are, where they are
coming from, and how to mobilize support for this
assignment, you realize that you will immediately
have to put this analysis to the test.
Your next step will be to call a meeting of your key staff
in the health department to go over the assignment
from the board. You are thinking that it sure would
be helpful if there were some basic tools about how
to run an effective meeting.
Community Engagement; Maintaining
Involvement and Group Cohesion
Tools of the Trade
Summer, 2009